No abstract

We examine whether firms’ information environment influences the market valuation of their hard‐to‐value knowledge assets: R&D capital. We find that a better information environment, as measured by greater analyst coverage, lower earnings forecast dispersion, and greater earnings forecasting accuracy, is associated with higher stock market valuation of firms’ R&D capital. We conduct additional analyses to rule out alternative explanations and test for the direction of causality. Our causal evidence suggests that analysts significantly reduce the information uncertainty surrounding firms’ R&D capital.

Strontium titanate microtubules have successfully been prepared using natural fibers of cotton as bio-templates, the cotton fibers are infiltrated with strontium titanate sol and subsequently sintered in air at high temperatures to produce the final strontium titanate microtubules. The samples were characterized by XRD, SEM and FTIR, respectively. The photocatalytic degradation of furfural in an aqueous solution was investigated. The results show that the synthesized strontium titanates are in the shape of broken microtubules. The photocatalytic capacity of synthetic strontium titanate microtubules under the condition of calcination temperature at 1000 °C is the highest. In the medium of pH 5-7, the catalyst loading is 2 g/L, for the initial concentrations of furfural no more than 6 mg/L, in 120min, furfural macromolecules are destroyed completely. The degradation process followed the Langmuir- Hinshelwood first-order reaction kinetic model.

Disequilibrating macro shocks affect different firms’ prospects differently, increasing idiosyncratic variation in forward-looking stock returns before affecting economic growth. Consistent with most such shocks from 1947 to 2020 enhancing productivity, increased idiosyncratic stock return variation forecasts next-quarter real GDP growth, industrial production growth, and consumption growth both in-sample and out-of-sample. These effects persist after controlling for other leading economic indicators.

The authors investigate whether and, if so, the extent to which a heuristic cue, the term "tax-free," contained in the name of one of the two primary tax-sheltered savings plans in Canada—the tax-free savings account (TFSA)—biases individuals' saving preferences relative to the registered retirement savings plan. On the basis of the heuristic-systematic model of information processing, the authors predict that the term "tax-free" is a favourable heuristic cue that will suppress systematic processing and bias individuals toward selecting a savings plan with this term in its name. They conduct three experiments to test this proposition. Overall, the results suggest that individuals have a clear preference for a tax-sheltered savings plan with "tax-free" in its name—regardless of the content of accompanying explanatory information. The preference for savings plans with "tax-free" in the name may suggest the need for more education and financial advice to reduce the use of heuristics.